One of history’s most powerful drivers of change is the so-called law of unintended consequences. It may not be subject to scientific demonstration and theorising, but, empirically, it’s often proven to be true. The rational instincts of modern man tend to make us assume that the course of events in the life of nations are broadly the result of purposeful, planned actions which produce corresponding effects. Retrospectively, we often consider these to have been “inevitable”, on the linear logic of action-reaction. A government makes bad policy for long enough, the country suffers, and eventually there is a “backlash” or corrective action. Nothing captures this simplistic assumption about the workings of history than the “weak men” meme popular in rightwing forums. It depicts a four stage cycle of hard times that create strong men, who in turn create good times, which lead to weak men, leading to back round to hard times and so on.
But it is the law of unintended consequences, or, if you will, the unplanned, unexpected, counter-cyclical run of events that moves the world even more than what this neat cartesian view of historical dynamics assumes.
A prime contemporary example is the use of sanctions and the major ways in which it has backfired. In Russia’s case, it has forced a wholesale reorientation of the Russian economy towards Asian markets, as well as being a blow to Europe’s own economic fortunes. As regards China, America’s attempts to starve the PRC of chips has only forced a surge in Chinese chip manufacturing, while the US resource-heavy push for AI dominance made the Chinese seek asymmetric solutions. The result, in the form of DeepSeek, threatens to undercut a major element of America’s global tech lead – a black swan for Silicon Valley if ever there was one.
In Europe
European politics is also exposed to the linear-logic fallacy – or put another way, to the potential disruption of the law of unintended consequences.
The clear expectation in the wake of Trump’s triumph across the Atlantic has been (and still is) that this will provide a “boost” to Europe’s own Euro-reformist and sovereignist parties in their political struggle against EU-aligned establishment forces across the continent. It is commonplace in populist circles, these days, to hear confident assertions to the effect that history is now “turning in our favour”.
The sense of optimism is understandable. A right-wing populist wave was confirmed at the 2024 EP elections. A right-wing populist party – previously slandered as fascist by the “mainstream” media – reigns in Italy. Another one, the AfD, is now vying for the first place in the German polls. In France, the government depends on RN support. In the Netherlands, on Geert Wilders’s support. Then there are conservative-populist strongholds Hungary and Slovakia. And where the populist forces are not in or very close to power, such as AUR in Romania or PiS in Poland, they tend to be the main or best performing force in the opposition, with their polling numbers on the rise.
Crucially, the consensus is that this populist forward-movement is effectively unstoppable because it is fuelled by systemic failures of the incumbent regimes and, more broadly, of the EU elite class and their wayward policies. Anywhere you look, from immigration to the green and “woke” agendas, on the economic, social or cultural fronts, the dysfunctions, costs and injustices produced by establishment ideology and political power are impossible to cover up anymore and have now become clear and obvious to large sections of the voting public. The chain of causality between progressive globalist policy (whether of centre left or centre right variety) and the rapid downward trajectory of Western societies is becoming unanswerable even by the well-funded Ancien Regime propaganda and fake news media. Ergo, the populists have all the momentum – especially now with Trump in the White House – while their opponents have to face the music. What could go wrong?
Counter-Reformation or Perestroika?
But the game is not over yet. Under extreme pressure many things become possible, especially in politics. This is because, when the stakes become really high — indeed, existential — and the options narrow, cutting off metaphorical limbs to save the body suddenly appears as a reasonable course of action. What until yesterday was held as a sacred principle and moral value, can now be dispensed with if it helps secure the only thing that matters: political survival.
In circumstances such as the ones taking shape in Europe right now — with an old, decrepit and corrupt regime being exposed in all its faults and facing a serious popular revolt — history shows that the incumbents will certainly attempt to head off the threat and regain the initiative through some kind of major new “reform”.
There are two historical models for how this can go. The first scenario is the 16th century Counter-Reformation: the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the Protestant “revolution” unleashed by Martin Luther in 1517. The resulting Reformation ripped through the Latin Church — which held spiritual dominion, and ultimate political authority, together with vast economic “rights”, over the entire Western Christendom — tearing whole territories away from the grasp of Roman power.
Luther and the other Reformists set out to expose the moral corruption, organisational dysfunction and — put in political terms — the ideological distortions of the great Ancien Regime of their times. They also made terrific use of the latest tech for mass communication, i.e. the printing press, to push their message and bypass regime censorship. It turned into an existential crisis for the Roman Church.
But the Church fought back, through the Counter-Reformation: a multi-front strategy to stem the bleeding and, where possible, turn back the Reformation tide. It combined genuine internal Church reform — in terms of some of its practices as well as doctrine — with what today we would call a positive propaganda and outreach campaign, both in the field of “good works” (through new Church Orders, like the Jesuits or Capuchins) and in that of the Arts (leading to some of the most stupefying splendours of the Renaissance) as a grand application of ecclesiastical “soft power”. Overall, it worked — giving the Catholic Church a new lease of life and limiting the spread of Protestantism in Europe.
The other scenario, with quite different results, is that of Gorbachev’s attempted reformation of the Soviet Union through his policies of perestroika (economic and institutional restructuring) and glasnost (openness through the loosening of the censorship regime). It completely backfired: once the door to reform was cracked open, the communist regime lost control of the process, the government became unstuck and the entire Soviet edifice came crashing down. Gorbachev was brave — and perhaps correct — to attempt to fix and adjust the communist system, even though technically the regime wasn’t facing any kind of an overt, organised opposition movement. Rather, his challenge (replicated across other Soviet satellite states) was latent internal dissent and direct external pressure by the US. But the economic, social and moral failures of communism had become unsustainable.
The regime’s turn
Which scenario will prevail in Europe, as the transnational EU regime — including its satellite “mainstream” parties in the different member states— mobilises to respond to the populist uprising in the age of Trump? Clearly, the sovereignist insurgents believe that events will unfold in a way similar to what the Soviets experienced — indeed, many of them habitually compare the EU with the USSR. And there is a good case to be made that if the EU attempts to U-turn on some of its key policies, for example on the green agenda, it might trigger an uncontrollable cascade of events. Most importantly, it would be a blow to Brussels’s authority.
But it is more likely that the EU’s response will be more akin to the Counter-Reformation — if it can stomach some really major policy shifts. Unlike the USSR, the EU is actually a rather well functioning — if horrendously bloated — machinery full of many competent bureaucrats. Indeed, this is partly what makes this undemocratic, supranational organisation so sinister: not just its power, but the tools it has to exert it. Consequently, the risk of Brussels somehow losing complete control of a top-down reform agenda, the way that Moscow did in Gorbachev’s time, is much lower.
And the EU has already launched itself on this path. Just over the past two weeks, Donald Tusk openly called for a “critical review” of the Green Deal, followed by von der Leyen herself announcing changes to the direction of green policy — and the discourse around it — that would have been inconceivable in the corridors of EU power even just a year ago.
The fact is that, actually, it wouldn’t take that much for the EU to change the political weather in Europe, if it got its act together. This is because its task would be one of policy substraction not of addition — a much easier mission. It does not need so much to build or launch new policies, but to simply pare back its own extremism and give up on bad policy, such as absurd Net Zero targets. It is only a matter of political will — this time prompted by a cynical calculus of self preservation — to start tweaking the asylum system, for example, or to start a major deregulation effort. In fact, von der Leyen has already indicated this.
Of course that these first statements and early efforts will be met with incredulity and derision by the populists. No one trusts the Eurocrats to offer more than tricks and actually turn back on their own policies. But one or two years of persistent EU work and talk in this direction – even if not much is achieved in concrete terms – will eventually show up in the polls as well, in the sense of starting to reclaim ground lost to the populist wave.
After all, the majority of the electorate holds “moderate” views on average; it only gives majority support to a more radical party if the “moderate centre” really screws up and looks to be beyond repair.
Another element that works in EU’s favour at this point in time — for now at least — is the lack of a full-blown economic crisis. Despite all the lurid stories of German deindustrialisation and the real economic downturn, none of this yet comes close to a real crisis situation such as the 2008-2009 one, let alone the great depression of 1929. Huge economic problems are being stored up for the future, especially through high debt; but politicians are especially adept at kicking the can down the road. The EU is still well placed to plug even major financial gaps that might appear, not least because it can print its own money. Mario Draghi’s “whatever it takes” remark from 2012 can still be taken to the bank even 13 years later, and likely more.
This is relevant because the economic situation governs, to a large extent, the risk appetite of voters when considering betting on a major change of regime. Counter-intuitively perhaps, voters are more inclined to take a punt on a radical new political party or project when the economics lie at the extremes of the spectrum, i.e. either when it’s going well.
Brexit was a case in point: it was the improving economic situation under David Cameron that gave many people the “psychological room” and confidence to risk a bit of potential economic pain for the democratic gain. Had the Brexit vote been held a year or two earlier, it would have failed.
Equally, voting for unconventional or radical solutions also tends to happen more easily when things are economically rather desperate and extreme solutions become appealing as a last resort when there is nothing much left to lose. This, indeed, is the story of the 1930s in Europe in the age of the great depression.
But Europe’s economic situation today falls somewhere in between these two positions: precarious enough to make people averse to risk, but not quite so (immediately) desperate that they feel no reform is possible and a total political reset is necessary. Indeed, this lukewarm economic temperature is what the regime is playing on right now, with the noises it is making about the new focus on EU competitiveness and green regulations reform.
Geopolitics might also work against the populist agenda, although the odds on this count are more even. The main factor at play here is the outcome in Ukraine: an early peace, of almost any kind, will remove a major piece from the European political board that has been influencing the populist vote either directly – as in Germany with the anti-war AfD – or indirectly, by way of the vast sums of money diverted (as many sovereignist politicians would put it) from EU taxpayers’ needs to Ukraine’s war effort.
In addition, peace might also come with lifting certain Russia sanctions, perhaps even the resumption of cheap Russian energy exports to the EU, thereby helping to relieve the pressure on Europe’s economy.
The biggest geopolitical wildcard that could conceivably come into play in Europe in the coming years is a greater opening to China in reaction to a potential major collapse in EU-US relations and the breakup, in all but name, of the Trans-Atlantic alliance. This remains a low probability scenario but, considering the series of unprecedented political developments in Euro-American relations recently – especially over Greenland – it cannot be discounted.
What is certain is that from a geopolitical standpoint Europe cannot afford and is not able to chart its own course anymore, independent of either of the two power blocs forming up (centred on the US and China). Its size also makes it a political prize that cannot be ignored, so a policy of “non-alignment” will not be tenable; in other words, if Europe is not in one camp, it will have to be in the other, and America’s loss will be China’s gain. In this case, the effect on European politics will be, again, to the detriment of the populist Right, given how much it draws on the American conservative movement, especially MAGA, for its vitality and intellectual content.
MAGA support?
What of the “Trump factor”? Will the MAGA supremacy in the US somehow create practical ripple effects in European politics, boosting Old World populists? It is possible to see some signs of that already, for example in the sudden lead taken in the Polish presidential campaign by PiS’s candidate since Trump’s own victory in the United States. But the Trump stardust, thickest around the shock of his victory and the glamour of his inauguration will not linger in the air forever. The achievements of his administration will indeed provide evidence of what a truly committed conservative government can deliver – but again, that example won’t translate easily in Europe where constitutions and governments work in very different ways, not to mention the supranational layer of EU interference.
The real question on this point is not the “cultural” influence and the mood music that Trump’s victory will set in Europe, but the actual, concrete assistance that Trump’s America – to include non-governmental US conservative forces – will be able and willing to give to Europe’s own populist movements. So far we have seen Elon Musk leveraging – quite properly and legitimately – his voice and profile in direct support of anti-establishment movements in Europe, whether the Reform party in the UK or AfD in Germany. This is certainly helping to fire up the base of these political forces, and is celebrated in those circles. At the same time, polling data indicates that Musk’s interventions might actually be doing much more harm than good with the wider public, with over 70 per cent of respondents taking a negative view of his interventions.
Aside from Musk, there has not been much direct and practical US involvement and assistance in the development of European versions of MAGA movements, whether at a national or inter-national level. The strongest “special relationship” of this kind, centred on exchanges between conservative think tanks on each side, has been with Hungary. But even so, Hungary’s impressive conservative intellectual infrastructure built during Viktor Orbán’s premiership is to a very great extent the result of local efforts and vision – chiefly directed by Balasz Orbán – rather than an American export. Aside from the Hungarian example, probably the next most notable one was Steve Bannon’s good but (so far) failed attempt, during Trump’s first term, to create a “school for populists” in Italy.
It remains to be seen whether, in the Trump age, a MAGA equivalent of George Soros will arise, with an interest in Europe: a philanthropist willing to spread a tiny fraction of his fortune across European conservative groups and organisations, from activist networks focused on conservative causes (not direct party-political campaigning) to conservative media, think tanks and the like, in the same way that Open Society has been doing for decades for the other side. Perhaps the case must be articulated with more skill and conviction.
But, for now and the foreseeable future, Europe’s populists must temper their expectations as to what the MAGA victory in the US could mean for their fight. In the practical, day to day political struggle in their national politics, it might not make much difference. There is no conservative equivalent of the Socialist International, much less of the more sinister, nefarious and better resourced Comintern – nor should there be, at least not in the same way.
Each political battlefield is different and each of these electoral contests must be fought and won largely on their own terms. Being able to point to concrete conservative achievements in America under Trump, as an illustration of what might be possible in Europe as well, is likely to remain about the most that Europe’s rightwing populists should expect, and it is no small thing either. But the US cavalry won’t be appearing over the hill to win European politicians’ battles for them.
What’s the plan
None of this is to suggest that European anti-establishment conservative populist parties have plateaued and can’t make any further headway. It is not even being suggested that they couldn’t eventually break through even at a systemic level across the EU. But it is, however, to say that the celebrations and sense of victory among European populist politicos after Trump’s win is unwarranted; and that in fact this same Trump win has thrust European politics into a new era.
It took Trump’s return to the White House to truly shock the EU into action – or, rather, reaction – on the political front. The tacit approval given to the cancellation of Romania’s elections in December – a constitutional crime of the highest order – sent an unambiguous message of “whatever it takes” from the EU regime to their populist adversaries, and was an early sign of Europe’s elite classes starting to mobilise fully. The recent declarations of intent on the Green Deal from Tusk and von der Leyen are, again, unprecedented steps along the same road of a new and large-scale, high-stakes approach to confronting populism.
In other words, the game is changing fast in European politics. The old tactic of tacking to the Right to placate populist demands and take the wind out of the insurgents’ sails is being rolled out again, but at a much higher level. Anti-integrationist, sovereignist conservative parties have done well in recent years by attacking the extremist policies of a globalist EU establishment gone mad, and awakening many more voters to the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
The EU doubling down on its most egregious mistakes has only turned it into a perfect punching bag as the truth of its moral collapse has become increasingly clear. But what if the punching bag is taken away, what if the attack surface narrows? What if some of those mistakes and insane policies start being rolled back? What will be the populist Right’s competitive advantage in that case?
Herein lies the challenge for Europe’s challengers: to develop a fully articulated and coherent vision for a new European conservatism – with national characteristics, in each case – that can compete electorally against a “corrected” version of the centre-right. This requires hard intellectual and policy work, going well beyond conservative buzzwords and slogans. There is no time to lose: the “empire” is already striking back, and will do anything to win.
Europe’s choice: win with Trump or “die” alone